


In the Dark

by hollyanneg



Category: Carry On Series - Rainbow Rowell
Genre: Eros and Psyche, Greek Mythology - Freeform, Kissing, M/M, numpties, song spells
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-30
Updated: 2018-11-30
Packaged: 2019-09-02 12:10:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,287
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16786693
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hollyanneg/pseuds/hollyanneg
Summary: Simon really wants to know the name of the cute boy he's been kissing in the dark. Unfortunately, the cute boy doesn't want him to know. Things go wrong when Simon tries to find out, and he has to fight Humdrums and numpties in the process of trying to fix it.





	In the Dark

**Author's Note:**

> This is loosely based on the myth of Eros and Psyche from Greek mythology, for day 5 of the Carry On Countdown.
> 
> It's my first foray into fanfiction (as a writer). I hope you like it!

BAZ

We only ever met each other in the dark.

I knew it was him right away, of course. Wouldn’t I know his voice anywhere, after I’d spent so many years fixated on it?

It started one night in March of Seventh Year, a night when I couldn’t bear to be in the Catacombs anymore, down with the bones and dust and rats and cobwebs. Down with my mother, who could never answer me when I spoke to her, as much as I longed to hear her voice. I’d already fed, but I wasn’t ready to go back to my room and stare at Snow while I couldn’t sleep.

So I went to the Weeping Tower and made my way to the basement, where the nursery had once been. Why not torture myself a new way, returning to the place where I’d been Turned?

I fumbled about, looking for a door even though I knew the nursery had sealed itself off. After a minute, I realized there was someone already down there. I could hear them moving around, bumping into things and muttering to themselves. It was too dark for the other person to see anything, and I ducked into an alcove before we got too close. I slumped against the cold stone wall, suddenly exhausted.

Something else moved in the dark—not me, not them. An animal, maybe.

The person who was down there with me spoke, loud and suspicious. “Who’s there?”

Simon Snow. Of course.

I should’ve known it would be him. Who else would be skulking around like that in the middle of the night? He’d probably gotten side-tracked while stalking me to the Catacombs.

I didn’t say anything. He came closer to where I was hidden, and I could hear his heavy breathing. “I know someone’s here,” he said. “Show yourself! **Let there be light!”**

Light flashed through windows high above our heads—Snow had apparently managed to turn the sun back on for a moment. Then it was dark again.

He cursed softly.

He hadn’t seen me. I stayed where I was.

Then he said, “Whoever you are, I won’t hurt you.”

He wouldn’t say that if he knew it was me. I sighed without thinking.

He said, “Are you—?” Then he was coming even nearer, and before I knew it, he was standing in front of me. It was always odd to see him so clearly and know that he couldn’t see me. His face was blank, but he reached out blindly and brushed my arm. Then he grabbed it. “There,” he said. “Who are you?”

I still didn’t speak.

“Are you lost?” he asked.

He had me—he wouldn’t let go until he got answers. That was the Simon Snow way. It occurred to me that if I made some excuse, I could leave. But only if he didn’t know it was me.

After a long silence, I said, “Yes, I’m lost.” I pitched my voice a little higher and tried to sound Northern.

“Oh.” He sounded relieved. “I can show you the way out if you want. Just tell me, did you see anyone come in here besides you?”

“Nah, thought I heard a rat or something, though,” I said, and I silently congratulated myself on sounding nothing like me.

“Hmm. All right,” he said.

“You don’t have to show me,” I said quickly. “Just tell me, where are the stairs?” I knew they were to my left.

“Umm…” Snow looked around, and I rolled my eyes. He didn’t know. “I’m a bit turned around myself, actually.”

“We’ll both look, then,” I said, but I actually planned to bolt as soon as I got away from him.

Unfortunately, Snow let go of me and immediately moved in the direction of the stairs. “Okay, I’ll look over here, you over there, yeah?”

I moved reluctantly in the opposite direction. The tower basement was a labyrinth of hallways, and I supposed it’d be easy enough to get lost in them if you couldn’t see.

I watched Snow bumble around, patting the walls as if they’d open up for him. He completely missed the stairs, anyway. Meanwhile, he said conversationally, “Do we know each other?”

Trust Snow to see a midnight mishap as a chance to make a new friend. “I don’t know,” I said, still careful of my accent. “Who are you?”

“Simon Snow,” he said.

“Oh, everyone knows you, then.”

“I guess.” He didn’t exactly sound happy about it. “What’s your name?”

I tried to think of something. Something plain. Like Michael. There were a million Michaels, right? 

… Not so many at Watford, though. Magickal parents tended choose more fanciful names.

I waited too long to respond. Snow said, “’Sall right, you don’t have to tell me. Are you in trouble, though?”

I fought the urge to be snarky. Why would Michael—or whoever—be mean to Snow? “I’m just embarrassed,” I said slowly.

“What for?” He was still looking for the stairs, with no luck.

What for, indeed? “I sleepwalk,” I said. “I just woke up down here. Don’t remember how I got here.”

There, now. That was reason enough for Michael to be embarrassed and not want to introduce himself. Right? And reason enough for him to be there without re-raising Snow’s suspicions.

Naturally, he turned sympathetic immediately. “Ah, that’s rough, mate. Must be a bit scary for you.”

“Mm-hmm.”

Then— “A-ha!” He’d found the stairs after several minutes of standing right next to them. As Baz, I would’ve clapped sarcastically. “It’s this way! Come over here.”

I took a few steps that way. I’d let him go up, and I’d follow once he was gone.

No such luck. He came over to me and took my hand, pulling me after him. “Don’t want you to get lost again,” he said cheerfully.

I balked. I couldn’t let him see me. He’d think it was all just another plot. He’d be furious.

“I—I think I dropped something,” I said.

“What? I’ll help you look. Maybe I can try that spell again—”

“No!” I said quickly. “I mean, you don’t have to. You go on. I think I can find my way out now.”

“Oh.” He sounded almost disappointed, but I had to be imagining that. He let go of my hand, and I realized belatedly that he’d never touched me that way before and probably never would again. “All right. See you around, then. Maybe.”

“Sure.”

I watched him walk away and disappear up the stairs. I waited a few minutes more, just in case. Then I followed. He was gone.

I wandered around campus for half an hour more in hopes that he’d be asleep by the time I got back to our room. And he seemed to be, when I finally went up. He was facing away from me, so I couldn’t tell for sure, but his breathing was even, and he didn’t stir.

I was satisfied. He would probably never associate this incident with me. He’d forget all about it soon. 

I went to bed basking in the afterglow of a friendly interaction with Simon—even if he hadn’t known it was me.

SIMON

Round about the first of April, I was lying in bed one night, flat on my back, annoyed. All the lights were still on because Baz was working on homework. We’d been arguing about it, but I’d given up. I wouldn’t be able to sleep either way. I’d had trouble sleeping for the past week.

We’d both been quiet for a while when Baz said, without turning around, “Can’t you pull yourself together, Snow? You’re making the air vibrate.”

I just growled at him, and he sighed.

“I’ll be done soon enough.”

“It’s not even that,” I said, rolling over and burying my face in my pillow.

“What then?” he said, sounding badly bored as always.

What does he even care? I thought. “Worried,” I mumbled.

“What does the Chosen One have to worry about it?”

He was baiting me. Surely he knew as well as anyone that I had a laundry list of things to worry about.

I decided to just tell him. He’d asked, hadn’t he? Maybe I’d catch him off guard with honesty. I had wanted to tell someone anyway, and I didn’t really see how he could use this information against me.

“I have a friend who sleepwalks, and I’m worried he’s going to hurt himself.”

I rolled over again and opened one eye to see Baz slowly sitting up from where he’d been hunched over his desk. “That’s enough to make your magic leak, is it?” he asked. “Who is this person?”

“None of your business,” I said. He didn’t need to know that I didn’t know.

He didn’t reply.

I really had been worrying about the boy I met in the basement of the Weeping Tower. Every night since then, I’d thought about going to see if he’d be there again. He hadn’t known how to get out. What if he got lost again? It might take ages for someone to find him. It’s not like people normally went down there.

Then again, he could probably find the way out once the sun came up. He’d just be stuck alone in the dark for hours, and it was so cold and damp down there—

I jumped out of bed and grabbed my jumper off the floor.

Baz whipped around. “What are you doing?”

I shoved on socks and shoes haphazardly. “None of your business,” I said again, and I headed out the door.

Nobody was in the basement of the Weeping Tower when I arrived, so I spent a few minutes walking around some of the other floors. Who’s to say he would always sleepwalk downstairs? Who’s to say he’d always go to the Weeping Tower… I wondered if I ought to check some of the other buildings. I made my way back to the ground floor just in time to hear the heavy front door closing and footsteps heading away from me.

“Hullo?” I called out. The footsteps stopped.

I walked down the hall, and in the tiny bit of moonlight coming through the windows, I could see someone tall near the door to the basement. As I watched, they disappeared downstairs.

I followed. The basement was pitch-black again, the kind of darkness where you can’t see your own hand if you put it in front of your face. The hall had such high ceilings, with small windows just at ground level. At the risk of setting something on fire, I decided to try the same spell as before.

 **“Let there be—”**

“Don’t,” said a voice from the shadows.

I stopped. “What’s wrong?” I asked.

“I’m embarrassed. You know my secret.”

It was definitely him, although— “Your voice sounds different,” I said.

“I’m ill.”

“Oh. Does that make the sleepwalking worse?”

“Yes,” he said. “I always sleepwalk more when I’m ill.”

“Do you need help getting out this time?” I asked.

“I think I might stay for a bit.”

“Here? Why?” I looked around—not that I could see anything. It was freezing down there and smelled like mould. Not an ideal place to hang out.

“I want to make sure my roommate’s asleep before I go back. He makes fun of my little problem.”

“What a wanker,” I said. “It’s nothing to be embarrassed of, really. Anyway, I won’t tell anyone.”

“Thank you,” he said. I heard him moving about, so I asked what he was doing. “Just sitting down,” he said.

I made my way towards where he seemed to be and sat down too. “Do you just wake up down here?”

“Yeah.”

“How many times has it happened?” 

“Three. What are you doing down here?”

“The first time I was looking for—er—” How could I explain that I couldn’t find my evil vampire roommate in the Catacombs, so I’d gone looking in other buildings? It’d sound a bit mad. “Someone. And this time I was looking for you. I’ve been sort of worried since you were lost before.”

“How noble,” he said, sounding just a little sarcastic. Just a little bit like Baz. “It’s nice of you, though.”

We sat in silence for a bit until I’d thought of some things I wanted to ask him.

“What year are you?”

“Sixth.”

“Oh, I guess we probably don’t have any classes together, then.”

“No.”

I kept shifting on the cold, stone floor, trying to get comfortable, but it was a lost cause. I’d managed to move a little closer to him, though, following his voice.

“Where you from?”

“Ahh—Leeds. Yeah. Leeds.”

“Right. Do you know in Mortimer Boyd in Eighth Year? He’s from Leeds, too.”

“No, I don’t know him. It’s rather a big city.”

I flushed in the dark. “Nah, I meant do you know him here. But I guess not.”

After another minute, I asked, “What’s your name, by the way?”

“I’d rather not say.”

I was getting frustrated. “I really won’t tell anyone about your problem, I swear! You shouldn’t be ashamed, it’s really not—”

“It’s a curse,” he said. “I’m not supposed to tell anyone.”

“I’ve never known a cursed person. I don’t think. Who cursed you?”

He laughed at me in the dark. “A wicked witch.”

I scoffed. “That could be anybody.”

He waited a beat before asking, “Have you decided to keep me company, then?”

“Yeah. I feel bad for you, but I like you, too.”

“You like me?” He sounded shocked. “Why?”

“Why not?”

“You don’t even know me.”

“So, let’s get to know each other,” I said. “Ask me something.”

“What’s your favourite colour?” he asked in a mocking tone.

I didn’t rise to it. “Yellow. Yours?”

“Blue.”

“There, now. We know each other better already.”

I got him to loosen up and talk to me a bit—just about school and friends, normal things. After a while, he said, “I think I’ll go. I’m tired. Will you stay down here until I’ve gone? I really don’t want to be seen.”

It was frustrating and confusing, him not wanting me to know who he was, but I agreed. “Guess I’ll see you back down here sometime,” I said.

“Why would you be down here again?”

“Because I’ll be worrying again.”

He paused where he was standing at the bottom of the stairs. I could just make out a long shape in the dark. “You can’t come down here every night, Snow. You need to sleep. I’ll be fine.”

“I can’t exactly check up on you in the daytime, can I?” I pointed out.

“You don’t need to check up on me.”

“I’ll want to.”

He sighed like I was a great nuisance to him, but somehow I didn’t believe it. I think he was actually pleased. “Fine,” he said, “what if I come back down here a week from tonight and promise you I’m all right?”

“Deal,” I said. “At midnight, so we won’t miss each other.”

“All right,” he said, and just like that, he vanished up the stairs.

That’s how our weekly meetings began. We’d both come to the basement of the Weeping Tower just as Wednesday turned into Thursday. He’d tell me if he’d sleep-walked at all that week, and if so, where he’d gone and what had happened. Sometimes the stories were pretty alarming. Like when he woke up on the other side of the moat. “How did you get back across?” I asked. “I floated,” he said. Or like when he woke up on a stone staircase. “You could’ve really hurt yourself! Believe me, my roommate threw me down a staircase once—” 

He cut me off. “I’m fine.”

One night I asked him if there were any spells to help you stop sleepwalking, and he said, “There might be, but they won’t work on a witch’s curse.”

“Tell me who cursed you,” I said.

“My wicked godmother.”

“Are you being serious?”

“She was angry that she wasn’t invited to the christening.”

I was properly disappointed. “You’re just telling a fairy tale! Magickal babies don’t get christened—do they?”

“Did you?”

“I grew up Normal,” I reminded him.

“You’re anything but normal,” he said, and it sounded sort of fond.

I got back to the point. “There’s got to be something that would help you. A magickal sleeping draught?”

“I don’t have trouble sleeping. I just have trouble staying in one place when I’m asleep.”

“I’ll ask around. I bet Penny would know if there’s a spell.”

“I don’t want you casting any spells on me,” he said warily. “Your reputation precedes you.”

“Reputation for what?”

“For blowing things up.”

I deflated a bit. Of course that’s what I was known for around school. Nothing good. Nothing noble. Just my lack of control.

“Forget I mentioned it, then,” I muttered.

I knew he hadn’t meant to insult me, though. Most of the time, he was kind. Funny, too. And clever. He had such a posh way of talking, all big words and proper grammar. He was fun to listen to. Fun to imitate.

In our third week of regular meetings, I finally convinced him to tell me his name. First name only, of course. Michael. He said it in a shy way, like maybe he thought it was too plain or something. I said, “I like that name,” even though I’d never really thought about it before. Knowing him made me like it more.

That night, he asked me if I ever thought about going to uni, and I said, “I’m honestly not sure I’ll make it that far.”

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“Well, I’m slated to die in a war before then, aren’t I?”

He went quiet for a while, until he asked me, “Do you ever think of leaving it all behind? Or just saying, ‘No, I won’t fight.’”

“I can’t. Too many people depending on me. Who else is going to fight the Humdrum?”

“Do you think the Humdrum will kill you?”

“If my roommate doesn’t get me first.” I was dead serious, but he laughed. “What about you? Going to uni?” I asked.

“Yeah, I will,” he said. “But my father and I will have different ideas about where and what I do.”

“Oh, is he always like that?” This was one of the most personal things he’d told me so far.

“Yes.”

“Are all fathers bossy? I wouldn’t know.”

“Isn’t the Mage always telling you what to do?” he asked.

“Well…” I didn’t like to think of it that way, but yeah. “Sort of. He’s not my dad, though.”

“Closest thing you’ve got though, I suppose?” He sighed. “I don’t actually think all fathers are bossy, but I wouldn’t know either.”

“How’s your mum? Is she nicer?” I asked.

He was quiet for a long time before he said, “Yeah, she’s lovely.”

In our fourth week of regular meetings, I kissed him.

I didn’t really think before I did it. We were sitting side-by-side, and he said something funny, and I thought, he’s so cute. I didn’t know what he looked like, obviously. He was just a cute person. We were so close together that our hands kept brushing each other, and it made me feel sort of giddy, and I just turned and kissed him.

For a minute, he didn’t move. I was about to feel really silly, when finally he started moving his lips. Then, before I knew it, he had one hand on my arm and one at my waist, pulling me closer. It made me smile, and he broke our kiss just for a second to say, “Aren’t you smug?”

“Very,” I said, smiling harder, and I kissed him while I smiled.

Michael kissed me sort of frantically, like he thought I might disappear, and he was trying to get as much of me as he could before that happened. I didn’t mind, not at all. His hands kept roving—to my hands, to my cheeks, and then into my hair.

I had never noticed before that Michael had long hair, but I could feel it now, brushing around my face. I twisted a few strands of it around my fingers. “Soft,” I said, pleased, and Michael laughed in a funny little breathy way.

He pulled away, and I was disappointed.

“Why did you do that?” he asked. “Kiss me?”

“I just wanted to,” I said. I went in for another, and he let me. He didn’t ask any more questions. We just kept kissing each other. We ended up horizontal on the floor. I braced on my arms above him, and he kept leaning up to meet my lips. Our kisses turned slow and lazy after a while, and I could tell from Michael’s voice that he was getting sleepy. “We should go,” I said reluctantly. “But… same time next week?”

“Absolutely,” he said.

We met three more times, and each one was the same. We kissed for ages, sometimes lazily, sometimes with gusto. Michael put his head on my shoulder sometimes and held my hand, and I thought it was awfully sweet. Once, he fell asleep that way, and I didn’t move a muscle, because I knew he had such trouble sleeping. I let him stay there even when my arm started to go numb.

When he wasn’t too tired, we talked loads. He asked me a lot of questions, more about my friends and about school, about fighting dragons and goblins and the Humdrum. He kept saying, “What’s that like? How do you feel about it?” He asked me what I did in the summer, and he asked about my childhood, and I found that I didn’t mind too much, and I told him some things I’d only ever really told Penny before, about being in the homes and feeling so different from everyone else, even when I was small and didn’t know why. I told him about feeling lonely—no friends, really, outside Watford—and dreaming about my parents appearing to rescue me.

Michael didn’t say much about all that. Just, “That must have been so hard for you.” He sounded sympathetic, and I gave him a hug for being so mad nice.

I tried to ask him questions about himself, too, and most of the time instead of answering them, he’d just change the subject. He did tell me that he came from a large family. He said he had a few sisters and an aunt he adored, and he said again that he didn’t really get on with his dad. I couldn’t imagine it being really bad, though. I pictured them all in some snug, warm house, bickering in a lovable way, like families in movies.

I asked him where he lived in Leeds. 

(I was all the time thinking about the fact that he was from Leeds. I’d been in a home there for a bit. What if I’d seen him on the street sometime? But like he’d said, it was a big city. I was also just a bit obsessed with his accent—it wasn’t like most Leeds accents, but it was cute.)

He just said, “Erm… near the university.”

One night, I learned a bit more about him when he told me that his roommate had been annoying him. It was ironic, because I’d just had a row with Baz earlier that day.

“I can relate, mate,” I said. (Then I felt a little embarrassed for calling my snogging buddy “mate.” But what should I call him? Darling?)

He said, “You have a bit of a rivalry with your roommate, don’t you? I’ve heard about that.”

“Pssh,” I said. “That’s all rubbish.”

“What do you mean?” He sounded suspicious, which made me laugh.

“I mean, he just decided from the beginning that he didn’t like me,” I said. “I didn’t do anything. Just being me was enough… There wouldn’t be any rivalry otherwise. I mean, I know he’s from the Old Families—” I couldn’t really tell anyone, not even Michael, how truly uninvested I was in the Mage’s war against the Old Families. “But there’s other people from those Families that I don’t mind at all. Baz is clever. He’s interesting. I think we could’ve been friends if he hadn’t been such a complete wanker to me from day one. And, you know, tried to kill me a couple of times.”

Michael sighed and didn’t say anything.

The next day, I was studying with Penny, and I couldn’t stop yawning. After a while, I drifted off and ended up jerking myself awake when my elbow slid out from under me. Penny looked over, unimpressed, and said, “Why are you so tired? You’ve been like this a few times recently.”

I’d been wanting to tell her, and she’d just given me an opening. I said, “Penny, I think I like blokes.”

She raised her eyebrows and said, “Don’t change the subject.”

“I’m not,” I told her. “It’s related.”

She looked properly sceptical, but she said, “All right, go on.”

So I told her everything. All about Michael—how I met him, and kept meeting him, how we’d kissed and how I wanted it to be real, not just a secret thing we did in the dark.

If Penny was surprised, she didn’t say so. Once I finished, she just said, “So his name is Michael? And he’s in sixth year?” I nodded. “We could find him,” she said. “I bet it wouldn’t even be that hard. We could just ask around. I’m surprised you didn’t think of it.”

I hesitated. “He keeps saying he doesn’t want me to know who he is. Don’t you think he’d be angry if I found him like that?”

“What else are you going to do? If he refuses to tell you, but you want to know…” She shrugged.

I tried to find the words to tell her that her plan might ruin things. I couldn’t. After all, I did want to know.

The next day at lunch, she said, “I haven’t figured it out. I’ve asked a few people who would know, but they haven’t heard of a Michael in sixth.”

I was scooping potatoes onto my plate, and Baz was behind me, sighing loudly and pointedly and finally saying, “Snow, could you possibly take any longer with those potatoes?”

“I haven’t got enough yet,” I mumbled.

Penny turned around and said, “Baz, maybe you can help us with something.”

Baz raised an eyebrow. “And why would I do that?”

“Because you know people.” She leaned one hand on the food table and said, “Do you know a sixth year called Michael?”

I stared at her, dismayed. Baz was the last person I wanted to know about that!

His face did something funny—like she’d made him uncomfortable in some way. Then he turned cool again. “Michael, hmm? It doesn’t ring a bell.”

“Should’ve known better than to ask him for help,” I said, but I was actually relieved.

A couple of days later, Penny threw her books down on our table at tea time and said, “All right, we’ve got a bit of a problem.”

Agatha was hovering behind her, and to my surprise, when Penny sat down, she did too. Agatha had asked me for a break back around Valentine’s Day and had barely talked to us since. I’d been pretty gutted about it… Until Michael.

“All right, Agatha?” I asked.

“I’m fine,” she said, but she looked worried. So did Penny.

“Simon, I don’t know how to tell you this,” said Penny, “but there is no Michael in sixth year. I checked the school rosters—Miss Possibelf has them, you know, and I was in her office yesterday to talk about class, so I just snooped a bit while I was at it.” 

I didn’t know what to say, but she kept going anyway.

“There’s only two Michaels in the whole school—Michael Zhao in second year and Michael Montmorency in eighth.”

“I know him a bit,” said Agatha.

“You told her?” I asked Penny, horrified.

“Yes, I told her that you’re looking for a sixth-year called Michael because you’re worried about his sleepwalking.”

I was relieved. Agatha didn’t know about the snogging, then.

“He’s in here,” said Agatha. “Montmorency. He always sits with the Galbraith twins, under the tapestry.” She gestured towards a table a few down from ours. I turned, trying to be subtle—but I’m really not good at it. I ended up staring, slack-jawed, at the gorgeous boy sitting with the twins, who I knew a little. He had brown hair that fell in waves around his face. He looked like he’d be tall, and he was definitely slim. He met the image of Michael that I’d formed in my head based on what I could tell about him in the dark.

Without thinking, I got up from the table. I heard Penny say, “Simon, don’t!”

I ignored her and marched right over to him. One of the Galbraiths said, “All right, Snow?”

“Yeah, cheers,” I said distractedly. I couldn’t stop staring at Michael. He was handsomer up close, with bright blue eyes and a relaxed, cheerful look on his face. That started to change, though, as I stared at him. Finally, I found words. “Are you Michael?”

“Yeah,” he said.

“The Michael who sleepwalks to the Weeping Tower?”

He looked confused. “I’m not sure what you mean. I don’t sleepwalk.”

“Would you tell me if you did?”

Now he seemed uncomfortable, and based on the way the twins were shifting in their seats, they probably were, too. “I’m not sure what you mean,” he repeated.

I kept staring for a minute, speechless again. I ended up sounding pretty desperate when I said, “Please, please tell me if you’re him.”

He frowned. “You’re Simon Snow, aren’t you? Are you on another quest?”

“Sort of.”

“I don’t think I’m the person you’re looking for.” He sounded so sincere, and he was looking me right in the eye, and I’m not the best at telling when someone’s lying, but I really didn’t think he was.

“Sorry for bothering you,” I mumbled. I slunk back to my own table, where the girls were looking anxious.

“So?” Penny asked.

“It’s not him. I mean, he said he wasn’t, and I think he’s being honest.” I slumped down, and I almost felt too depressed to eat my scones. But not quite.

“I didn’t think so,” said Penny, and she sounded pretty sure of herself. “Why would an eighth year lie about being in sixth?”

I thought about the other Michael she’d mentioned and got a sick feeling at the thought I could’ve been kissing a second-year all this time. But surely a 12-year-old wouldn’t be so tall…

Penny said, “I’m so sorry, Si, but either way, he’s lied to you. About his name or age or both. What do you really know about him?”

I couldn’t believe that everything else he’d told me was a lie. Granted, he hadn’t gotten super personal. But the part about the big family? The part about the expectations his father put on him? That couldn’t have all been fake. And he’d been so nice about my magic and my past and everything else I’d confided in him. He was a good person. I was sure of it.

Penny must have read the look on my face pretty clearly. “Please don’t be stubborn about this. I’m not saying you should stop—” quick glance at Agatha— “being friends with him. But be smart about it. You need to find out who he really is and why he lied.”

“I agree,” said Aggie, smoothing down her hair. “What Penny told me sounds really odd, honestly. You meet in the dark? He won’t let you see him leave? He’s got to be up to something… something…”

“Sinister?” Penny suggested.

Agatha nodded. “Sinister.”

“He’s not sinister!” I protested. “He’s sweet!”

“You’ve got a lot of enemies, Si,” said Penny. “I’m sorry to say it, but he could just be using you.”

I refused to listen to any more. I abandoned my tea and ran out of the room.

I stopped being mad at the girls pretty quick, though. I knew they were just worried about me.

Waiting for my next meeting with Michael was hard. I wanted to demand answers. I was angry, knowing he must’ve lied. I wondered why he still didn’t trust me.

I wanted to clear the air, and I wanted to state my intentions. It was almost the end of term—in fact, our next meeting would be after classes had already ended. I wanted to know he wasn’t just going to disappear. I wanted to know that even if we didn’t talk over the summer, I wouldn’t lose him completely.

Two days before I was supposed to meet him, I said to Penny, “What if he still won’t tell me the truth? Once I confront him?”

She thought about it for a minute and said, “You could always turn on the lights. He might be upset, but that’s a quick way to see who he is.”

“There aren’t any lights down there,” I said. “Not in the halls, anyway, and the rooms are all locked.”

“Use a spell,” she said, like that was so easy.

“I can’t ever seem to cast **Let there be light** properly ,” I said. My wand fizzed pathetically at the words, just proving my point.

“There’s lots of other light spells,” she said.

“Will you help me find one I can actually cast?”

“In less than two days? I suppose I can check the library.” She sighed, looking exasperated—as if this wasn’t exactly the kind of thing she loved to do.

So I went down to the bottom of the Weeping Tower as usual on the last night of the term. I carried a candle with me.

Michael was already there when I arrived, and as soon as I sat down he grabbed my arm and pulled me in for a kiss. I melted. I couldn’t be angry with him for very long. He held me close and told me all about his week, how he was bored in Elocution and wished he had a better teacher, how his roommate was being a git, as usual.

I didn’t say much. I was worrying over whether or not to go through with my plan. In the end, I decided to do it. He might not be happy with me, but I needed to know who he was.

He fell silent for a bit, still holding onto me so that I was sort of leaning sideways against his chest.

“There’s something I need to say,” I told him.

“All right,” he said, but he sounded wary.

“I know you lied. It’s all right—I’m not angry anymore. But why didn’t you tell me your real name?” He didn’t respond right away, so I added, “There’s no Michael in sixth year. I asked around. There’s one in second and one in eighth. But I figure you’re probably not either of them.”

“You don’t know who I am?” he asked.

“No. How could I?”

Long pause. “I lied because, as I told you, I’m embarrassed about sleepwalking,” he said, voice strained.

“You haven’t sleep-walked for weeks, though, right?” I rubbed his arm to try to be reassuring, but my words were coming out too fast. “And you know me now. You know I wouldn’t judge you for that. Won’t you just tell me your name? I want to know you for real. I want to see you during the daytime, not just down here, and I want to be able to kiss you all the time and maybe be your boyfriend.”

After a long, terrible, silence, he said, “You can’t.”

I didn’t understand it at all. What did he want from me? “Why not?”

He didn’t answer. I sighed in frustration. I was going to have to use my last-resort option. I picked up my candle.

Earlier that day, Penny had shown me a spell in a book that looked to be a few decades old. “This spell requires you to be in the presence of someone for whom you feel a romantic or physical attraction,” she’d said. “You have to draw on your desire for that person to cast the spell.” She’d said that really powerful mages could cast it without any helping tool, but that in my case, it might be safer to use a candle.

So I picked it up. I took Michael’s hand and thought about kissing him, and I said, **“Light my fire.”**

A flame roared—more bonfire than soft candle glow. It calmed down after a few seconds, and when it was no longer between us, I saw Baz Pitch staring back at me in horror.

Oh, I thought. I should have been surprised or disgusted, but I found myself strangely pleased instead. Baz looked awfully pretty in candlelight.

… Until I realized that his hand was on fire where I’d been holding it.

I panicked. My candle blew itself out, but Baz’s hand still burned. I needed to do something, fast. He was a vampire! He’d be gone in minutes. **“Make a wish!”** I shouted. A gust a wind blew through the room, which logically should have fed the fire, but somehow put it out instead. 

I cast **“Get well soon”** in the general direction of his hand, and he hissed in the dark. “I’m sorry, did that hurt?” I asked, anxious.

“As usual, your magic is a menace,” he said. He still sounded like Michael, not Baz. I didn’t understand. Why was he still pretending? The only difference was that now his voice was ice-cold.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to burn you.” When he didn’t respond, I said, “I didn’t know it was you. I mean, I didn’t want to hurt you either way, but—”

“I didn’t want you to know it was me,” he said. “And you’ve hurt me more than you know.”

I had a feeling he wasn’t talking about his hand.

He stood, and I scuttled out of his way. Just before he swept up the stairs, he said, “You’ve ruined everything, Snow.”

I sat there for a minute, dazed, and then I realized I needed to go after him. I dropped the candle and ran up the stairs and outside, back to Mummer’s House.

When I reached the tower, Baz had bolted the door. I don’t know how he even managed to do that. The door was supposed to remember me and always open for me. I tried the spells we used to get back in at the beginning of a new term, and even that didn’t work. He must have used some incredibly powerful magic to lock me out.

I pounded on the door. “Baz! Let me in! You can’t keep me out of my own room!”

There was no answer. I kept knocking, considering my options. I wondered if the noise was enough to wake people in the rooms below ours. Could they help me? Or better yet…

“Baz! I’ll get a professor! I’ll get the Mage!”

Baz wrenched the door open. He looked down his nose at me (that preposterously long nose) and said, “Yes, Snow, go and run to the Mage like you always do.” He shoved me into the wall of the stairwell and moved past me, and then I realized he was holding his suitcase and schoolbag. He floated a trunk out of our room and down the stairs, then he followed it.

He’s leaving, I realized. As in, for the summer. As in, I wouldn’t see him again for weeks and weeks.

I ran after him. “Baz, we have to talk about this!”

He stopped at the bottom of the stairs and cast a spell back up at me. **“Silence is golden!”** He gave me one last sneer before he disappeared out the door.

I stayed where I was. What was the point in running after him if I couldn’t say anything? I was furious with him for ending it like that. I knew the spell would wear off in an hour or two, but by then, he’d be long gone. There was nothing I could do. By the time we were back at the end of summer, he’d act like nothing had ever happened. I was sure of it.

I couldn’t pretend that nothing had happened. I was surprised to find that I didn’t care that Michael was Baz. I wanted him anyway.

I wanted him more.

I couldn’t sleep the rest of the night.

I’d watched from the door of Mummer’s House as a cab picked Baz up and took him away. Then I’d laid in bed staring at the ceiling for hours, feeling sorry for myself.

I trudged down to breakfast when it was finally time, and Penny was already there, reading one of her leisure-time books, 18th Century Magickal History.

“You look knackered,” she said.

“Didn’t sleep much,” I told her.

She looked me over carefully. “I’d ask how it went with Michael, but based on your expression…”

“I’ll tell you everything later,” I said. “Not here.”

I felt marginally better after I’d eaten. Penny and I walked out to the edge of the Wavering Wood so that we could talk without anyone hearing us. Not like it was really some big secret—I just felt so embarrassed.

I told her how I’d messed up the spell. “It just figures,” I said, kicking at the ground. “Of course I couldn’t do it.”

“But did you find out who he is?” she asked. “That was the most important thing.”

“I found out… It was Baz.”

“Baz? Your roommate? The vampire?” She stood gaping at me.

“What other Baz do we know? It makes sense, doesn’t it?” I said, feeling goofy. “It’s him I was looking for that first night.”

“Baz was Michael?” she asked again. I nodded, and she started to laugh.

“It’s not funny!”

“It is a little. You’ve been falling in love with your worst enemy?”

“I’m not in—” I stopped mid-sentence because maybe she was right. Maybe I had been falling in love. “Well, he was nice,” I said, blushing. “Down there. In the dark. He was pretending to be someone else. Someone not evil.”

Penny turned thoughtful. “Have you ever considered that maybe he isn’t actually evil? In real life?”

“No, I haven’t,” I said. It was a ridiculous thought.

“Maybe he’s tired of all the fighting. Didn’t you say you’d introduced yourself to Michael right away? So Baz knew it was you all along.”

“Maybe he was plotting,” I said glumly.

“Maybe he wasn’t. Maybe he just wanted to kiss a bloke.”

“He’s the villain in my story, Pen. He doesn’t get to be the love interest, too.”

“Suddenly all your obsessing about him makes a lot more sense—” 

I was about to tell her she’d got it all wrong when the landscape shifted around us. Like I’d just blinked, and suddenly we were in Lancashire, near a home I’d stayed in as a kid. Right away, I could feel that familiar dry, sucking that meant the Humdrum was nearby. It was hot—so much hotter than was normal even for summer.

“Is this a dead spot?” Penny asked. “It feels—”

And then, there it was. It. Him. The Humdrum. You could tell that whatever else he was, he was the source of that horrible feeling in the air.

And he looked like me. Like 11-year-old me, rough and ragged, like when I first came to Watford. He was even bouncing the red ball I’d always carried around with me at that age. 

Penny and I stood frozen, too shocked to do anything. I didn’t move until he threw me the ball. Then I lost it; I just started screaming at him to show his face. It was too much to bear—the being that threatened my entire world, that apparently only I could stop, making itself look like me.

He just laughed and laughed.

Penny stole the ball and threw it away. The Humdrum chased after it. I turned and saw that some kind of fluid was leaking out of Penny, and without really thinking, I picked her up and started to run. I just wanted away from him and away from the dead spot. At some point, I shouted, **“I wish I could fly!”** \-- just because I wanted so badly to leave it all behind. The words came out dripping with magic, and before I knew it, gigantic, bony, feathery wings were sprouting from my back, and I was taking to the air. I was still holding Penny, and I heard her cast a couple of spells so that I wouldn’t drop her. I flew for a few minutes, until my rush of adrenaline started to fade. I meant to tell Penny that I needed to stop, but I couldn’t really get the words out. I saw a town in the distance, and once we got a little closer, I headed for it.

We landed hard in a ditch beside a road and just sat for a minute staring at each other. Penny looked horrified. I wasn’t sure if it was because of the Humdrum looking like me or if it was because of the wings. My best friend thinks I’m a freak, I thought sadly. After a bit, I found my voice and said, “Maybe we can get a train from here—wherever this is—back to Watford.”

Penny’s voice was weak, and she’d started to cry a bit. “Simon, you’ve still got—” She moved around until she was behind me. I felt her touching the wings, and she gasped. “They’re falling apart.”

I said, “I wish they were gone,” hoping it’d work like it had the first time. It didn’t. I could feel blood trickling down my back, but the pain hadn’t really hit me yet. I felt Penny pushing, like she wanted to put them back inside me. That clearly wasn’t working, either.

“I can’t think,” she said. “What would work? **As you were. Back to start. Nonsense!”** The last one seemed to work. I felt the weight of the wings disappearing. “They aren’t all gone. There’s still just—” she touched at my back. “I don’t know. Remnants. You can’t walk around like this.”

“I don’t have much choice,” I said. I turned around to look at her, and she nodded, so we climbed out of the ditch and made our way into town. 

I nicked somebody’s wallet outside the station so we could pay for tickets. Penny said, “Where’d you learn to do that?” and I thought that was a lot less important than everything else that’d just happened.

We got back to Watford and burst into the middle of the end-of-year ceremony. Everybody turned around and stared, and the Mage trailed off in the middle of speech. The next thing I knew, Penny’s parents were whisking her away—I didn’t even get to say goodbye. The Mage announced that everything was fine and no one should panic. He didn’t even know what had happened! Shortly, I found myself in his office trying to explain it all. I was pretty concerned with the fact that the Humdrum could apparently summon me at will across hundreds of miles. All the Mage kept saying was, “He has your face? Your face?”

And after all that, he sent me away as always.

I felt like the Humdrum had just declared war, and I ought to stay and fight. I was also worried what might happen if he summoned me again when no one was around to help or even know what had happened to me. But the Mage said, “We’ll carry on as usual, Simon.”

I was back in a care home two days later.

After all that, it was just a normal summer. I had my usual instructions not to contact anyone from the magickal world. It was harder to obey that rule than ever before. I felt so unsettled from everything that had happened, and I wanted to know if Penny was okay. But I would’ve settled for talking to absolutely anyone from that world. Just to know it hadn’t all burned down in the aftermath of that insane encounter.

I put Michael—Baz— firmly on my list of things not to think about, because there was nothing I could do about it, anyway.

BAZ

One night in the basement of the Weeping Tower, Simon Snow told me that he had a list of things not to think about, because they were unpleasant.

It was the kind of thing I doubt he would’ve said if he knew who he was talking to. It was the kind of thing I would’ve mocked if I were being myself. Michael, though, was kind and understanding about it.

Why was it so easy for me to be that way when cloaked in darkness, and so hard the rest of the time?

After I’d escaped back to my father’s house at the end of term, I decided to try Snow’s technique of not thinking about unpleasant things.

Like, for instance, the fact that I’d had to escape from Watford, which was normally my safe-haven.

Like the fact that I’d just broken my own heart—if I had one—and possibly Simon’s too.

Like the shocked look on his face when he saw that it was me and again when I’d spelled him silent.

Like the way he’d threatened to go straight to the Mage when I locked him out.

Like every night that I’d had to run back to our room as fast as I could before he left the Tower, throwing myself into bed still dressed and trying to hide my heavy breathing when he walked in.

Like three months of disguising my voice—which hadn’t been traumatic so much as nerve-wracking. I’d found a spell for it after the first couple of times, one that would make me sound like what Snow wanted to hear, so that I wouldn’t have to worry about slipping up anymore. It would wear off after a couple of hours, and one night, Snow and I talked so long that I could tell my voice was going back to normal. It was fun (frustrating) to try to slip the words **Voice of an angel** into normal conversation and hope he wouldn’t notice the magic behind them. He didn’t, of course, the beautiful, oblivious git.

Most of all, I tried not to think about kissing him.

I didn’t actually succeed.

Truth be told, I’d been fantastically happy every time we kissed, even though he didn’t know it was me. It was nice to imagine, for a couple of hours a week, what it would be like to be Simon Snow’s boyfriend, to actually be loved by him. But he was falling for a persona I’d created. Not me. If I’d ever let myself imagine that he could actually love me, that illusion was shattered as soon as he saw my face. He’d looked horrified.

My family was surprised when I came home a day early. I told them honestly that I couldn’t stand being around Snow for another minute. It wasn’t hard for them to believe.

The whole summer went on that way—me trying and failing not to think of him, not to miss him. It was different than previous summers, because now I knew what being with him might actually feel like. Not just the kissing, but the laughter and confidences, too, and the sweet little surprises, like how he started bringing pillows and blankets down there with him after I mentioned that I found the basement cold and uncomfortable.

(I always spelled them clean for him the next morning because he never thought to do it himself.)

After all my years of fantasizing, that little taste of being with him hadn’t disappointed me at all.

You know when you think things can’t get any worse? That’s hubris talking, and I have more than my share of it.

There was an afternoon in August when I’d gone up to the club to play tennis for some stress relief—hitting the ball as if it was the culprit behind all my problems. I was particularly melancholy that day, because I’d thought of breaking down and texting Wellbelove to ask for Simon’s number, only to realize that he probably didn’t have one or at least wouldn’t be allowed to talk. He’d told me all about the homes the Mage sent him off to in the summer. As if I’d needed any more reasons to hate the man.

Point being, I thought I couldn’t get any lower. But then I walked out of the club and someone—or something—hit me in the back of the head. I blacked out.

SIMON

By late summer, I was going a little crazy.

It was a bad summer to be stuck in the middle of nowhere. I was dying to see Penny and, though I hated to admit it, Baz.

It occurred to me in August that I could leave care a bit early. I’d technically been old enough to leave for two years now. Who would mind? The Mage? He wouldn’t even know. It was only a couple of weeks until school, but as soon as I’d realized I could leave, I couldn’t wait.

I signed myself out by lying to the people who did admin at the care home. They thought I went to some kind of juvenile delinquents’ school, so it was easy to make them believe that I had to do a two-week summer school course before the term began.

I packed all my things and tried to decide where to go. I knew, more or less, where Baz’s family lived. Everyone magickal did. His family’s mansion was a bit famous. I knew they had houses elsewhere, too, but I reckoned they’d probably be at the big one in Hampshire.

I decided to go there first. Once I’d talked to Baz, I’d go see Penny.

I set off for Hampshire thinking of all the things I would say to Baz once I saw him.  
I had so many questions. As much as I’d tried not to think about it, I still wondered if the whole thing had been one of his plots, the cruellest one yet. Was that why he’d asked me so many personal questions? So he could take that information back to the Families? He’d probably lured me into the Weeping Tower on purpose, that first night.

Some sad, hurting part of my heart kept insisting that it wasn’t like that. He’d seemed so sincere. So many of our conversations hadn’t been about anything in particular. I thought about all the times I’d made him laugh, and I was sure that hadn’t been fake. The kissing hadn’t either. He’d liked kissing me, I was certain. It’s easy to tell when someone isn’t enjoying a kiss—I’d felt that plenty of times with Agatha. Baz couldn’t be that great an actor.

Not to mention that the kissing had been my idea, anyway. It couldn’t have been part of his plot.

I set off for his house not sure whether I was going to accuse him or just beg him to forgive me for the candle incident.

I didn’t get to do either, in the end.

I arrived at his slightly terrifying house early in the afternoon. A housekeeper answered the door, looking a bit surprised to see me. I guess they didn’t have a lot of guests who were as rough-looking as me. It didn’t help that I was carrying everything I owned. I looked homeless, and I guess technically I was for a couple of weeks.

I asked to see Baz. The housekeeper gave me a funny look, like that was a strange thing to say. She asked for my name. I gave it reluctantly. He probably wouldn’t come to the door if he knew it was me.

She let me come into the front hall. I ended up standing on a rug, face-to-face with a scowling statue of a chimera. Maybe the statue had inspired Baz’s chimera attack in fifth year, I thought.

I waited for a while, and when someone finally appeared, it wasn’t Baz or the housekeeper. It was Baz’s father.

I’d met him a few times before. He was scarier than his house. He had the same widow’s peak as Baz, and the same sneer. He looked like he could eat me alive.

His voice was chilly when he said, “Mr. Snow. To what do we owe the honour?”

I decided to be as polite as possible, though that wasn’t my gut reaction to seeing him. “Hello, Mr. Grimm. I had something to discuss with Baz, if it’s not too much trouble.”

He said, “I think you know perfectly well that Baz isn’t here.”

I didn’t. Obviously. I faltered for a moment. “Ah. I didn’t know. Where is he?”

“That’s what I’d like to know, Mr. Snow,” he said, stepping closer to me until he was practically in my face. “And I suspect you have some idea.”

I swallowed hard. “I don’t have any idea. Did he run away?”

“My son,” he said slowly, “would never run away.”

I suspected he was right. Baz’d always seemed pretty dedicated to his family. I was confused. “He’s gone, but you don’t know where he is?”

He stepped back and looked at me like he wished he hadn’t said so much. He seemed furious, but underneath all that, I thought I saw a little fear, or maybe sadness. “I think it’s best if you leave,” he said.

I was about to protest—and ask him to please explain what was going on with Baz—but he had already passed me to open the door, and his expression left no doubt that he would make me leave if I didn’t go on my own.

I sat dejectedly outside the Grimms’ house for a while. I mulled over what had just happened and came to the conclusion that Baz must be missing. I didn’t think it was a plot, either. His father had seemed genuinely upset.

Part of me wanted to knock on the door again and offer to help find him, but I knew they’d never let me. Part of me just didn’t know where to go. First off, how would I get another cab out here? And then what? I’d wanted to see Penny, but I knew her mum wouldn’t be thrilled about hosting me for two weeks.

As I sat there, an old sports car roared up the drive and parked right in front of me. Baz’s evil aunt Fiona got out and stood there staring. She whipped off her sunglasses, and she looked wickedly amused. “Well, well what’s this? Didn’t expect to find the Chosen One sitting on Malcolm Grimm’s front steps looking like Oliver Twist.”

I wasn’t sure what that was supposed to mean, other than being a dig about orphans. “They’ve already told me to leave, so you don’t have to bother,” I said. Then, something occurred to me. Maybe she’d tell me what was going on with Baz. Maybe she’d recognize that I could be helpful, even if she did hate me. I decided to act like I already knew everything. “You must be worried, what with Baz missing and all.”

Her cocky smile disappeared, and she pulled her wand on me. “What would you know about that, mageling? Did you have something to do with it?”

“Of course not! I’ve only just found out about it!” I shook my head. I should’ve known she’d accuse me immediately, just like Mr. Grimm. “I want to help, actually.”

She narrowed her eyes. “Why would his sworn enemy want to help him?”

“I never swore to be his enemy,” I said. “Actually, I think we’d sort of got to be friends this past term.”

“I think Baz would’ve told me about something like that.” She put her wand away, but she didn’t look any friendlier.

He certainly wouldn’t agree with me about the whole friends thing, anyway.

“You won’t let me help, then?”

She rolled her eyes and finally walked past me. “Run on back to the Mage, Chosen One.” She disappeared into the house.

I was still sitting there 45 minutes later when she came back out. I’d stopped worrying about where to go for the moment. I reckoned I had time, since nobody had come out to make me leave.

Fiona looked me over and said, “Still here? Maybe you will be useful after all. But how? As a power source or as ransom?”

I leapt up, nervous. “What do you mean?”

Before I knew what was happening, she’d cast **Tell the truth,** and I felt it hit me. “Do you know anything about Baz’s disappearance?” she asked me.

“No,” I said, annoyed. “I told you, I just heard about it today, here.”

“You didn’t have anything to do with it?”

“No!”

“Did the Mage?”

“I’ve got no idea, but that’s ridiculous.”

She gave me a look that said don’t be so sure, but she said, **“As you were,”** and I felt the spell release me.

“You really want to help?” she asked.

“Why’d you change your mind?” I countered, because I didn’t trust her at all.

“Because the news is pretty bleak, Snowflake,” she said. She grabbed my arm and pulled me into the house.

Fiona stuck me in a dark lounge that looked like it hadn’t been redecorated in about 200 years. She disappeared into the library with Baz’s father for a while.

The housekeeper kept coming in to offer me food and tea, and I kept accepting it. She was pretty clearly a Normal, and she seemed so out of place there, but she also didn’t seem to be fazed by any of what was going on. Since she thought I was Baz’s friend, she chatted to me about what an adorable child he had been, and I couldn’t picture it at all—Baz, adorable?—until I thought about Michael, who definitely was.

After a few ages had passed, Fiona and Mr. Grimm came in and stared at me for a little while, and I felt my face going bright red from discomfort.

Finally Fiona said, “Snow, we’ve heard you don’t have much control over your magic.”

I was annoyed to have sat there that long just to be insulted again.

I couldn’t really deny it, so I said, “What of it?”

“Tracking spells require a lot of control,” she said. “They also require a lot of power. None of mine have worked so far.” She looked uneasy about admitting that. “Do you think you could cast one without flattening a city or anything?”

I really couldn’t promise anything. After all, I’d almost burned Baz alive in the process of trying to declare my feelings. I shrugged.

The two of them murmured something to each other. I stared at the weird rug under my feet, which had little devils on it.

“We’ll try it,” Fiona said to me. “Fancy a little jaunt to London?”

Turns out, when Fiona said London, she actually meant the underworld. 

First off, she took me to the magickal club that I’d been to before with Agatha’s family. That part wasn’t scary, especially since we didn’t have to go inside and pretend to be charming. She said that’s where Baz had gone missing. We sat in the carpark, and she had me try a couple of tracking spells, which ended with a bunch of random objects collecting on the hood of her car and a photo of Baz flying out of her wallet and hitting me in the face.

The scary part came after: she took me to some bar under a little grocery store in Soho. The outside looked normal, but the inside was dark, and everyone in there looked too thin. Not in the fashionable supermodel way, but in the might-have-a-terrible-illness way. Fiona chatted to a dodgy-looking bloke for a few minutes, and he kept looking over at me menacingly.

She came back over to me after a while and said, “Mac had something for us.” She held up a glass with a bluish liquid in it. “Drink this.”

I was highly suspicious. “What is it?”

“It’ll help you focus.”

“Or poison me,” I said.

“You’re no good to me dead,” she said. “For now.”

That really didn’t help. When I wouldn’t take it, she sighed heavily and went back over to the dodgy man. She came back again with two glasses of the stuff and said, “Here, I’ll drink first so you know it’s not poisoned.”

She drank, and she seemed fine after, so I finally took the glass. I didn’t feel any different after drinking the stuff, but she pulled me back out on the street, then into an alley. “Less conspicuous,” she said. “Try that first tracking spell again.”

The first spell she’d had me try was **I still haven’t found what I’m looking for** , which had made me laugh. Song spells were funny to me. She’d glared and said, “This is no laughing matter, Snow.”

I tried it again in the alley. “Think about what you want to find,” she reminded me. This time, the tip of my wand glowed red and cast a laser beam to my left. Fiona’s eyes lit up. “We may have something here.”

We went back to her car. The beam kept changing directions as we walked, always pointing back the way we’d come. Once she was driving, she turned every time the beam turned. At first it seemed like it was taking us to the British Museum, but then we took a sharp right back towards the river. We ended up on Fleet Street, and then another right turn took us down to Blackfriars Bridge. The beam wanted us to cross the river, but when we reached the other side, it abruptly disappeared.

“It thinks he’s here,” said Fiona.

“At the end of Blackfriars Bridge?” I said. That didn’t make any sense.

She didn’t say anything. We both waited for the beam to reappear. It didn’t until we’d driven away. Then, it pointed us back to the bridge.

Fiona drove around the neighborhood for a bit until she found a place to park—stole it from somebody who was already trying to pull into it, which led to a lot of blaring horns and swearing.

We walked back to the bridge. The beam held steady until we got there. It seemed to point to a blocked-off area under the bridge, just where it met the riverbank.

“How can we get in there?”

“We’re mages, aren’t we?” Fiona straightened her coat and marched right over. She didn’t even check to see if anyone was around before she started throwing spells left and right. One lifted us off the ground to where there was a barred opening. One bent the bars enough for us to get through. One lit up her wand so we could see in the darkness under the bridge.

The beam of my wand pointed towards the river again, then disappeared. We took a couple of steps, then I ran into something large and solid. I realized that there were boulders all around us.

Fiona said, “Merlin. They’re fucking numpties. It’s a numpty den.”

“Baz, kidnapped by numpties?” The thought was so ridiculous that I laughed, and she gave me that same don’t-laugh glare from before. She turned and went back to the opening where we’d come through the fence.

“What are you doing?” I said, following her. “What if he’s down there? We can’t just leave!”

She didn’t speak until we were back out on the road. “They’re sleeping, but they’ll wake up if we make any more noise.” She pointed to the Blackfriars Tube station and said, “Snow, go buy us a couple of newspapers. Doesn’t matter which ones.”

“But? What are you? Why?”

“Just do it. I’m going to have a bit of a think.” Apparently, that meant lighting up a cigarette—at least her fifth since we’d been together.

I went and bought the papers, like she’d said. I brought them back to her. She put out her ciggy and said, “Here’s the deal. If they wake up, I’ll cast **paper beats rock** , and then we’ll whack the hell out of them with these. But don’t go nuclear on me, Snow. Not right away. I want answers.”

With that, she lifted us off the ground, and we went back into the numpty den. This time, they started moving right away, and she said loudly, “My name is Fiona Pitch, and I’m looking for my nephew. Where is he?”

There was a rumbling sound, like rocks rubbing together, and it took a minute for me to recognize the sound as speech. The numpties were saying they didn’t know anything about it, but they were moving closer to us, too. Trapping us.

Light, they were saying. Warm. Give us the light.

They meant Fiona’s wand. “No way in hell,” she said. “I know you’ve got him. Tell me who did this. Who told you to take Basilton?”

Won’t say, said the numpties. Promised. He gave us warmth.

“Who?” she insisted.

Your kind. Magic.

“A mage?” I said, shocked.

“Who else?” she said, and I knew exactly what she was thinking. “What did he look like?” she demanded. “I’ll give you all the warmth you want if you tell us.” They didn’t say anything else, so she added. “I’ll come back here with blankets and heaters—anything you want.” She sounded desperate, and I realized right then how much Baz meant to her. I’d never thought of it before, but he was all she had left of her sister.

Warm? said the numpties.

“So much warm,” she said. “You’ll never be cold again.”

A man, they said. Like you. Green man. Your headstone.

“Green?” said Fiona slowly. “Headstone? God, it’s exactly what I thought.”

Warm! the numpties insisted. Light! They started to move in, and in moments they had me pinned against a wall.

“Cast the spell!” I said.

“ **Paper beats rock!”** She started hitting them with her newspaper, and I did the same, and each one we hit went still. I slid my way out from where I was trapped.

Fiona asked one of the still-moving numpties, “What was the Green Man’s name? Did he tell you?”

Didn’t tell us. Said, take the vampire. Give him blood. Promised warm.

“I’m giving you the warm,” she reminded them. The last two started to roll again, so I hit them, and they stopped.

“I’m not sure I was done with them,” Fiona said sharply.

“Come back later, then. I don’t care about them. We need to find Baz.”

She nodded, and we climbed over the piles of motionless numpties, moving farther back into their lair.

There was a shape back against a wall that seemed to mark the end of the den. “What’s that?” I said.

We went a little closer, and then I knew. It was a coffin. Fiona swore.

“It can’t be,” I said. “He can’t be—”

There was a sudden pounding noise, and then a voice from inside the coffin. I couldn’t understand what he was saying, but it was unmistakeably Baz.

Fiona rushed over and started prying it open. Just as I went to help her, I heard the rumbling again. There was one numpty we’d missed, apparently, perched up on a ledge like it had been watching over the coffin. It rolled off and hit me square in the ribs.

I fell. The lights went out.

**“Get well soon! Early to bed, early to rise!”**

I came to and saw Baz hovering over me, wand out, frowning. My heart did a funny little flip at seeing him again after so long. But as he came into focus, I realized he was ashy pale and thinner than I’d ever seen him. He said, “Oh, he’s fine.”

From somewhere, Fiona said, “You aren’t, though. Get in the fucking car.”

I realized I was lying flat on pavement, still near the bridge but no longer under it. Baz had been sitting next to me, but he moved out of my line of vision.

I heard her say, “Don’t fuss, I’ll get him,” and then, “Don’t you dare. Front seat’s for people who haven’t been kidnapped by fucking numpties.”

She came and stood over me and said, “Can you move?”

I tried to sit up. I felt wobbly.

“You have a concussion,” said Fiona matter-of-factly. “You’ll be all right.” She helped me up and over to the car, and just before she stuck me in the front seat, she whispered, “Thank you.”

Fiona spent the next few minutes yelling about numpties and how did you let this happen, until finally I said, “Lay off him, will you?”

He wasn’t saying much at all.

I wasn’t sure anymore what I wanted to say to him, once we were finally alone.

BAZ

I fell asleep on the way back to Hampshire and didn’t wake up until my father was lifting me out of Fiona’s car. He had a look on his face I hadn’t seen since I was a child—a look of care and deep concern.

I was put straight to bed. Snow was whisked off somewhere—I couldn’t understand how he’d ended up helping my family, and no one was explaining anything.

It had occurred to me, right after I left Watford, that Simon Snow was nothing if not persistent. If he wanted to talk about what had happened in the Weeping Tower, he’d find a way. For a little while, I’d expected him to show up on my doorstep, demanding answers. Or to call me, at the very least. But then six or seven weeks had passed, and I’d stopped expecting it. Stopped hoping for it. (Because no matter how angry and ashamed I’d been when he’d exposed me, I couldn’t help wishing for some kind of declaration of love. For him repeating that he wanted to be my boyfriend. Even if I had to turn him down.)

Had he finally appeared like that after I was taken? I couldn’t imagine a scenario in which my family would’ve gone to him.

I waited for ages. I fell asleep again, woke up again. Sometime late that night, Fiona appeared in my room and started ranting about how she was certain that the Mage had orchestrated my kidnapping. I didn’t doubt it. I also didn’t care. For the moment, all I cared about was Simon.

So I asked her, “What’s Snow got to do with all this?”

“Nothing to do with your kidnapping, it seems,” she said.

“Why was he helping you?”

“He turned up here asking for you, saying you two are friends. Are you?”

“I don’t know,” I said. I bit back a smile. He had come looking for me! He must not hate me, either, if he’d said that.

“Anyway, we recruited him.”

“So you thought it was a good idea to enlist the Mage’s Heir to help you find someone the Mage kidnapped?” I asked.

“Worked, didn’t it?” She looked pleased with herself.

“Where is he now?” I hoped to sound nonchalant, but I very much wanted to see him.

She waved off my question like it didn’t matter. “Sleeping off his headache in one of the guest rooms, I think.”

I’ll talk to him in the morning, then, I thought. Fiona left, and I went back to sleep.

By the time I woke up, Snow was gone.

Later that day, I had the first of several rows with my family about going back to school. They were convinced that the Mage was behind my kidnapping, and I didn’t doubt it, but they said going back to Watford meant walking right back into his clutches. They all agreed, even Daphne, who usually took my side. I didn’t care, honestly. I didn’t think he could do much to me at school. I was hardly ever alone there, and there were plenty of people who’d notice if I went missing. Not least of whom was Snow, who knew I’d been kidnapped once and would probably be on high alert.

It was my last year, and I insisted that I couldn’t let Bunce take my spot at the top of our class.

An actual reason: I didn’t want to stay in my father’s gloomy house with him constantly talking about my future, what I should and shouldn’t do with it. Where to go to school, what to study, whom to marry (a girl, of course).

An actual reason: I’d have nothing much to do besides uni applications, and no one to spend time with except very small children.

An actual reason: I wanted to be near Simon, no matter how he felt about me now.  
(On one hand, he’d helped rescued me and told Fiona to lay off. On the other hand, he’d disappeared immediately without speaking to me.)

My family only came around because I was so stubborn. I told them I’d walk to Watford if they wouldn’t take me. They wouldn’t let me go early, though, so I ended up arriving in the middle of the welcome picnic. I dropped my bags in our room and went straight to the Great Lawn, because I couldn’t wait. I wandered around for a few minutes, ignoring my friends who were waving me over, because there was only one person I wanted to see.

I’d planned to rush over as soon as I saw him, take him by the hand and lead him someplace private to talk (and maybe to snog).

But when I finally spotted him, he was surrounded by his whole troop—Bunce, Rhys, Gareth, and Agatha.

Merlin, what if he’s back with Agatha? I thought.

It didn’t look much like it—she was ignoring him, as she often did. Still, the mere idea made me feel sick, so I stayed where I was.

Then he looked up—our eyes met—and I was mesmerized, frozen in place.

I couldn’t tell from that distance what he was thinking. He looked ridiculous—eyes wide, mouth hanging open, some kind of sauce on his cheek. He looked exactly like himself, which was to say, perfect.

But after a moment, he looked away almost bashfully, and I regained movement and went over to Dev and Niall after all. I’d talk to Snow later.

I didn’t have to wait very long. We both went straight back up to our room after the picnic. I caught him on the stairs, about to nick his finger to get in.

I snatched the knife out of his hand. “Snow, how daft are you, honestly?” He pouted, and I performed the spell to let us both in.

He went straight to his side of the room and sat on his bed, arms crossed. “Might be a bit nicer to someone who helped save your life,” he said.

I tried to look as unimpressed as possible. “I don’t think the numpties had any plans to kill me.” (They probably would have by accident, though. I was pretty ravenously hungry after so many days without human food.)

He rolled his eyes, which was fair, honestly. I’d reverted to my usual snark without meaning to.

I swallowed my pride and said, “Thank you. Really.”

He nodded, mollified.

I sat down, too. “There’s some things we need to talk about,” I said. “First off, why did you help my family?”

“Why wouldn’t I?” he asked, as if we’d never given him any cause to hate us, or vice versa. “I came to see you, and they said you weren’t there, and I put it all together and realized you were missing, and then of course I offered to help.”

That sounded pretty Simon Snow, to be honest.

“I think they only accepted because they were so worried about you,” he added.

I decided to get straight to the point. “Did you help them because of what happened last spring, or would you have done it anyway?”

I saw him struggling with his words. “I think… I want to think… I’d have helped no matter what. We’ve had a lot of—ah, differences? But you’re just a boy, and anyway, it’s wrong to kidnap people. But, honestly, Baz? I wouldn’t have even been at your house if it weren’t for what happened last spring. That’s why I wanted to see you.”

“To say what?” I slumped on the bed, folding over to protect myself from whatever was about to happen.

He considered that question for so long that I thought he wasn’t going to answer, but then he said, hushed, “To ask if it was real.”

That wasn’t at all what I expected. “What do you mean?” I tried not to sound annoyed. “It really happened. Of course it did.”

“Of course,” he echoed. “But did you mean any of it? You were pretending to be someone else. Was any of that actually you?”

I hesitated. In the dark, as Michael, I’d been kind to Snow in a way I never would’ve in daylight, as myself. I wasn’t really in the business of freely offering kindness to anyone, but I remembered what he’d said about how he hadn’t chosen to be my enemy. Maybe if my family hadn’t pitted me against him from the first, I could have been kind to him. I knew I would have loved him either way.

When he’d asked me personal questions, I’d alternated between truths and lies. Anything I’d said about Leeds was obviously nonsense. But what I’d said about my family… most of that was true.

I’d waited too long to answer, and Snow looked like he was on the verge of being very angry with me. I blurted, “Some was, some wasn’t.”

He didn’t seem too impressed with that, but he said, “So which parts were real?”

“About my family. About my classes. About my annoying roommate.”

So not impressed with me.

I tried to put words to the rest of it. “It’d be easy to say that I invented a personality for this guy, but truthfully, I think maybe you saw a side of me I hardly ever let out.”

“What side?”

“A nicer side.”

He twisted his mouth in an odd way, like he didn’t believe I could ever be nice. Fine, I thought. No surprises there. It was never actually me he wanted.

He waited a while before speaking again, but then: “Penny said maybe you just wanted some practice with kissing boys.”

“What?” I was annoyed but unsurprised to hear that Bunce knew all about it.

“I don’t know. Like, maybe you just wanted it because it felt nice or because you’re scared to do that, you know, in real life. But it still doesn’t make sense, because it was me. You knew it was me the whole time, and you hated me—do you still?”

All through this little speech, he was looking at the ground and wringing his hands a little, but at the last moment he looked up at me plaintively. My heart cracked.

“I never hated you.”

Things I never thought I’d be honest about…

“I didn’t want practice kissing boys. I just want to kiss you. Simon Snow. Specifically.”

“What?” He made that stupid face at me again, the one from the picnic, and I wanted to kiss him so badly that I had to hold myself back.

It had been two months, seven days, and about 18 hours since I’d last kissed him.

“I like you,” I said. Probably the most ridiculous understatement of my life.

“You can’t.” But then he immediately asked, “How long?”

“Ages.”

“Be specific,” he said, with a wicked grin starting.

Could I count that? I decided I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. “Doesn’t matter, Snow.” I leaned back on my hands and tried to look as careless as possible. “What matters is, do you still want to be my boyfriend? You said you did, but you didn’t know who I was then.”

He looked me over, like he was actually trying to decide. “Will you set chimeras on me if I’m your boyfriend?”

“Can’t promise.”

Eye-roll. “Will you be nice to me at all?”

“I’ll try,” I said honestly. “Will you always insist on seeing things before you believe them?”

“What does that mean?”

“I mean—you weren’t content to just like me in the dark. You had to know who I was.”

“I think that’s pretty normal of me, actually,” he said. He stood up, walked over to my bed, and touched my cheek. It was such a soft gesture, but he still looked unbearably cocky. “Didn’t work out too bad, did it? Looks like I got a boyfriend out of the deal. I mean, I had to fight numpties to get him back, but still…”

I couldn’t help smiling. A real smile, not a smirk or a sneer. His smile turned gentle, too.

“That’s a yes, then?” I asked.

“As long as you don’t use any more false names.”

“As long as you don’t burn me with any more candles.”

“As long as you don’t disguise your voice.”

“As long as you don’t report every single thing we do to Bunce.”

“Can’t promise,” he said, mocking me.

I tugged on his shirt until he was down at eye level. At lip level.

Sometimes kissing is better in the light.


End file.
